Tagged: dylan thomas

AmeriCymru spoke to Welsh poet and Seventh Quarry poetry magazine founder and editor Peter Thabit Jones about plans for the forthcoming DT100 ( Dylan Thomas 100th Anniversary ) celebrations in New York and other US cities.

"Dylan Thomas is a cultural icon around the world and a poet who made a major impact on poetry itself. In many ways, poetry was never the same after the publication of the astonishing 18 Poems in 1934 and 25 Poems in 1936. For Wales, it is a great opportunity to celebrate his life and works and to put the spotlight on the main places of his inspiration, Swansea and Laugharne, indeed the whole of Wales."

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AmeriCymru: Hi Peter and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. What in your opinion is the significance of this Dylan Thomas centenary year to Wales and the Welsh American community?

Peter: Dylan Thomas is a cultural icon around the world and a poet who made a major impact on poetry itself. In many ways, poetry was never the same after the publication of the astonishing 18 Poems in 1934 and 25 Poems in 1936. For Wales, it is a great opportunity to celebrate his life and works and to put the spotlight on the main places of his inspiration, Swansea and Laugharne, indeed the whole of Wales. It will also be an opportunity to spotlight both literatures, English-language and Welsh-language, the unique culture of Wales and its varied and inspiring landscapes. It will be great if Welsh tourism, as well as literature, also gets a huge boost via DT100.

AmeriCymru: Of course, Dylan Thomas visited the US several times in his later years. How do you think he rated and valued the experience?

Peter: It was Dylan who wanted to go on that final tour, against the wishes of Caitlin and his tour-organiser, John Malcolm Brinnin. I think he was probably shocked and awe-struck by America, in particular New York, on the first visit. He was an ‘impoverished poet’, escaping a country still stuck in the rationing of World War Two, so the sheer size of everything American must have been a real eye-opener. He wrote a letter to his parents describing the size of an average American dinner and he sent sweets and treats back home for Caitlin and the children. He made many close friends there, such as sculptor David Slivka, who was to be the one, with Ibram Lassaw, to make Dylan’s death mask; and he loved to sit and talk to working-class, non-literary men in pubs such as The White Horse Tavern. He was ‘at home’ in such places.

I also think the incredible response to his first visit from audiences, where the likes of poet e. e. cummings were blown away by Dylan’s performances, endorsed a need for more clarity in his writing, which he had already started in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog and in Deaths and Entrances. Under Milk Wood was a step in that direction and had he lived I think he would have written dramas for television and worked on scripts for commercial films. Maybe Lennon and McCartney would have chosen him, rather than fellow Welshman Alun Owen, to write the script for A Hard Day’s Night, as they were fans of Dylan. He met many famous people during his visits, such as Charlie Chaplin, and he was as excited as any fan by such a meeting. His historic Caedmon recordings established what was to become the spoken-word industry. Dylan, in many ways and all alone, did what The Beatles were to do in 1964: take America by storm.

AmeriCymru: We understand that the First Minister of Wales will be visiting New York in February 2014 and that he will be guided on the Dylan Thomas Walking Tour as part of the DT100 launch in America . Care to tell us more about this visit?

Peter: Yes, the visit by the First Minister of Wales will be the launch of DT100 Starless and Bible Black in America, organized by The British Council. My and Aeronwy’s Dylan Thomas Walking Tour of Greenwich Village, commissioned and developed in 2008 by Catrin Brace of the Welsh Assembly Government in New York, will be launched as a tourist pocket-book. It has previously been available as a PDF, an audio version narrated by Welsh actor John Pierce Jones, and a guided tour with New York Fun Tours. Along with the tourist pocket-book, The British Council and Welsh Government have commissioned a company to do an internet/smart phone version. I have been helping the company and it is an exciting development, which hopefully will stimulate an interest in Dylan and his New York visits among young people who engage with this new technology.

The First Minister, other dignitaries, and the media will experience aspects of the Walk, such as The White Horse Tavern, guided by an official New York tourist-guide, Hannah Ellis, Dylan’s granddaughter, and me. My New York publisher, Stanley H. Barkan of Cross-Cultural Communications, will be accompanying me. Robert Titley of the Welsh Government in New York has organized it all.

Also, my New York publisher has organized a launch for the book at Poet’s House, New York, on March 5th. Hannah has written the Foreword; and it has such (extra) things as an unpublished photo of Dylan’s death mask, a drawing self-portrait by Dylan, a drawing of Dylan and Caitlin by Caitlin Thomas, and paintings of Dylan by America’s Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and Carey Crockett, and Italy’s Gianpiero Actis. I will give a talk, Dylan Thomas in New York, and Stanley H. Barkan, a terrific reader, will read some poems at the launch.

AmeriCymru: Are there plans to visit other US cities?

Peter: Yes, I am at the NEMLA Conference in Pennysylvania in early April, where I’ll be on a literary translation panel and where I’ll give a talk on Dylan Thomas and organise a poetry workshop. Whilst back in America, the book will be launched at the historic The Grolier Poetry Workshop in Boston on April 9th. I’ll deliver my talk again and Dr. Kristine Doll, my host and a poet, and poet and owner of the Bookshop, Ifeanyi Menkiti, will read some poems. Then in July, when I am writer-in-residence again in California for a fifth summer, it will be launched at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, where I’ll be accompanied by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and John Dotson.

Its Welsh launch, by the way, will be at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. I have also researched and organized a Dylan Quotations Trail, which will be on display for people to follow at the Museum, from July 2014 to March 2015.

AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little about the internet app version of the Dylan Thomas Walking Tour Of Greenwich Village, which is being launched to coincide with the centenary?

Peter: It is based on the book version and is being produced by a Welsh company. A Welsh actor is being chosen to narrate the Walk and read some of Dylan’s works. Obviously an app has so much creative and interactive potential and so I can’t wait to see what is produced. Aeronwy and I always felt there should be a tourist book version and she would be so pleased. I’m sure, too, she would be thrilled by an app version. Her daughter, Hannah, is very excited by the book and the app.

AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to discover more detail about the various events and publications?

Peter: Firstly,

http://dylanthomas.org ; secondly, The British Council/Wales website, under Starless and Bible Black; thirdly, the Poets House website; and there will be various other links as things unfold.

AmeriCymru: How will your international poetry publication, The Seventh Quarry, mark the centenary?

Peter: I am including some wonderful drawings of Dylan during periods of his life by Swansea artist Jeffrey Phillips in the Winter/Spring and Summer/Autumn issues. Jeff has put together an exhibition on Dylan that will tour parts of Wales. I have also interviewed Dreena Morgan-Harvey of the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea for the Summer/Autumn issue. Lastly, Quarry Press will publish a chapbook of Dylan-inspired work by a writers’ group based in Swansea. I will give a talk on Dylan and carry out a writing workshop with the group.

Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas? is published by Seren on November 9 2008, the 55th anniversary of the death. £9.99, ISBN 978-1-85411-480-8

It is now available from local bookstores, internet book suppliers or direct from www.seren-books.com . It will be many months before it appears in the US and other countries, so the internet and the Seren website are your best bets.

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From the Back Cover:-

Dylan Thomas went to New York in October 1953 to perform in Under Milk Wood. Three weeks later, he was dead. This fascinating book confronts painful facts about why he died.

Neglect was central to the death. John Brinnin, Dylan’s agent, had a playboy lifestyle to fund. Desperate for his fees, he turned a blind eye to the poet’s failing health.

Liz Reitell, Brinnin’s zealous deputy, also knew Dylan was ill but she worked him to collapse. Did she put her own career before his well-being? Brinnin’s intimate papers show how greed, ambition and sexual intrigue fed into a chain of events that sent Dylan to an early grave.

Dylan suffered from a treatable illness but his fashionable New York doctor ignored the warning signs. David Thomas
examines hospital data and the post-mortem report – included in the book – and shows that medical negligence
was a factor.

Fatal Neglect also investigates the conspiracy to protect those responsible. Friends and doctors took part in a cover-up, as did two of Dylan’s American biographers.

David Thomas’ previous books on Dylan Thomas have required us to rethink the poet’s life. Fatal Neglect is a fundamental reappraisal of his death.

David Thomas was brought up in Pontarddulais and Port Talbot. After Oxford and the LSE, he worked in London as a senior lecturer and chief executive. Since returning to Wales, he has written widely about Dylan Thomas, including The Dylan Thomas Murders, The Dylan Thomas Trail, Dylan Remembered and A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, now a major film, The Edge of Love, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Rhys.

A pictorial tour of some of the pubs Dylan Thomas visited in Swansea, west Wales, Oxford, London, and the USA. This book will put Dylan Thomas's love of public houses and liking of drink into its proper perspective. Events that happened to him in and around pubs are reflected in his famous works and these are discussed in the book.

Buy Dylan Thomas: The Pubs here

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A recent article about the current Dylan Thomas centenary in the UK Guardian announces that Wales is preparing to resurrect the poet''s reputation . But is there really much work to be  done? A recent book published by Y Lolfa looks at Dylan''s ''alcoholism'' from a new angle.

This meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated book seeks to put the record straight on Dylan Thomas''s lifelong love affair with the pub. Was the poet more interested in people than pints? Did he crave fellowship and social interaction more than alcohol?

In the introduction, author Jeff Towns makes a number of telling points in support of this thesis. Firstly Dylan was, for the most part, a beer drinker. He objected to a colleagues suggestion, whilst working at the BBC, to keep a bottle of whisky in the office and only consumed spirits in any quantity on his American tours toward the end of his life. Additionally he was regarded by himself and others as an entertainer, the ''pub fool'' perhaps. He had a wide repertoire of bawdy jokes and limericks at his disposal and he craved the adulation of a receptive audience for his performances. All of this is far removed from the traditional picture of the sad and lonely alcoholic sitting at home alone pickling himself with the strongest liquor available. Perhaps there is truth in Dylan''s own observation that:- "An alcoholic is someone you don''t like who drinks as much as you do." The opinions of contemporaries should also be borne in mind, some of whom recall him as a habitual ( and occasionally excessive drinker ) but by no means a hardened alcoholic.

But however persuasive the introduction, it is the sections on individual pubs and incidents in Dylan''s life which are the real meat of this volume. Here is an incident ( quoted in the book ) that occurred in the Mermaid Inn, Oystermouth Rd, Mumbles:-

" Once after a widely reported rabies epidemic, Dylan and friend Wynford Vaughan Thomas....used this as some spontaneous horseplay. They went down on all fours and crawled around the floor of the pub, pretending to be rabid dogs, biting people''s ankles. When Dylan tried this on actress Ruby Graham, she feigned anger and shooed him out of the door. She was astonished to see him continue across the pavement to a lamp-post. "I thought he was going to pee on it.", she recalled. Instead, he bit on it, leaving him with a broken tooth for the rest of his life. ( Afterwards he used to tell her he remembered her every time he smiled.) "

This incident was later referenced in Thomas''s radio play Return Journey . Other passages from Dylan''s writing are illuminated in the same way and this is one of the many strengths of this book.

Together with the wonderful illustrations by  Wyn Thomas, the wealth of incident recorded here is sure to delight  Dylan Thomas afficianados and casual readers alike. An unreserved thumbs up and five star recommendation.

Jeff Towns is a rare-book dealer based in Swansea who, for more than 40 years, from his Dylans Bookstore, has specialised in books about Wales in all its many aspects and ramifications and in particular, the life, works, manuscripts and iconography of Dylan Thomas. In 1993 he edited an unknown poem by Dylan, Letter to Loren , and is currently working on several other books and films on aspects of the poet''s life.

Wyn Thomas (Illustrator) was a design draughtsman before becoming broadcaster specialising in history and the arts for radio and television

A pictorial tour of some of the pubs Dylan Thomas visited in Swansea, west Wales, Oxford, London, and the USA.

Written by: Jeff Towns

Published by: Y Lolfa

Date published: 2013-24-11

Edition: 1st

ISBN: 1847716938

Available in Paperback

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From left to right:- The Worms Head Hotel, Gower - The Uplands Tavern, Swansea.

Dylan's Great Poem opens for submissions on Thursday 28 April at 9.00 am and invites anyone aged between 7 and 25 years old, living anywhere in the world, to submit up to four lines of poetry written in English or Welsh. From these, 100 lines will be chosen to create the Great Poem.

The theme for this year’s competition is ‘hands’, after the Dylan Thomas poem ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper.’

Entries need to be sent via the Developing Dylan 100 website before 12.00 noon on Thursday 5 May .

This year, we have joined forces with Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. Selected entrants to Dylan’s Great Poem, who are between 11 and 17 years of age, and living in Wales, will be invited to a poetry writing masterclass to work on entries to the Poetry Society competition.

Dylan’s Great Poem will be edited by Rufus Mufasa and clare e. potter, and will be published online and performed on #DylanDay.

For resources, see: http://www.literaturewales.org/dylans-great-poem/

To submit lines visit the Developing Dylan website .

For more information contact Literature Wales:

07846484274 / mabananajones@gmail.com

Follow online #GreatPoem #DylanDay @DyddDylanDay

He was awarded a PhD on the French and Spanish poetry of Juan Larrea at the University of London under the supervision of Ian Gibson in 1975. Thesis title:  The Poetry of Juan Larrea , described as outstanding (“sobresaliente”) by the external examiner, Professor Arthur Terry, the Catalán poetry specialist.

He writes in English and Spanish. Read more here

ROBERT GURNEY ON THE WELSH AMERICAN BOOKSTORE

AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about your latest collection Dylan's Gower?

Robert: Hi Ceri. On the back cover of Dylan’s Gower, the publisher, Chris Jones of Cambria Books, has written:

“In this tribute to Dylan, his [Dylan’s] life on the Gower Peninsula in Wales is imagined poetically in the movement of a wave, the build-up, the swell, the rise, the disintegration, the spindrift, the crashing down. Then the relief, the calm before the next wave begins to form. Poems that start with poetic intensity, move towards those that have a painful or nightmarish quality and end with poems that have a lighter touch.”

I felt that the influence of the Gower peninsula in Dylan’s formation was being underplayed of late and sent this note in the South Wales Evening Post. It forms the Introduction to Dylan’s Gower:

“Talking to Dylan Thomas’s lovely granddaughter, Hannah Ellis, and to the inspiring Olivier Award-winning actor Guy Masterson last night at the RSA in John Street, London, on the occasion of their brilliant British Council seminar “Dylan Thomas: A Life in Words”, I was particularly struck by Hannah’s reference to Dylan’s notebooks which he wrote between the ages of fifteen (possibly earlier) and twenty. She mentioned how these had been lying mouldering in a box in Boulder, America, but are now available to the public in Swansea. Hannah argued that everything was there, in embryo, in those notebooks, that that period of poetic creativity, those five or more years of “cosseted” (Hannah’s word) creative activity, a veritable explosion that occurred within the young genius relieved to drop out early, at sixteen, from a school in which he was bored, were the foundations of his work to come. Dylan lived in Swansea, on the edge of Gower, during those years.

Hannah referred to a text in which he wrote that he “often” went down to Gower. The gist of this book, Dylan’s Gower, is that it is clearly time to re-evaluate the influence of the spectacular and quirky Gower Peninsula on his work. Hannah maintained that Newquay and Laugharne were key periods in the gestation of Under Milk Wood. I agreed but argued that to them must be added the beautiful bays and villages of his early ‘backyard’, the place to which he would escape during his formative years and to which he was tempted to ‘retire’ in the final year of his life. This book points, perhaps, to the need to re-evaluate the role Gower played in the formation of the creatures of the mysterious entity of Dylan’s literary imagination.”

The above was published on 25 October 2014. In Dylan’s Gower I explore a little possible links Dylan’s imagination had with the peninsula.

AmeriCymru: This is your second anthology on the theme of Dylan Thomas in this centenary year. How important a figure is Dylan in the history of Welsh literature?

Robert: I am not really the best person to judge this. My wife went to a grammar school near Swansea and told me that nobody mentioned Dylan at all when she was there. He wrote only in English, as you know. Personally I feel he is tremendously important for Welsh literature but it depends how you define the latter. Some say he was too “English” for the Welsh. I am not an expert on Dylan’s poetry although I read any book on him that I can lay my hands on.

I am simply somebody who has been inspired, gratefully,

by his work, by its music, its sound and by his voice.

AmeriCymru: What particular personal memories inspired these tributes?

Robert: The memories are numerous. Mark Rees of The Evening Post interviewed me this summer.

The interview was posted on September 14. (See http://verpress.com/to-dylan-2014/ ). The unabridged version can be read on http://verpress.com/dylans-gower-2014/ .

My memories of the area where Dylan grew up begin at an early age, while I was still at Primary/Junior School. I had an aunt and uncle in Baglan. My cousin, their daughter, to who I am close, lives in Mumbles.

I cycled around Mumbles and Gower on old broken down bike with no brakes when I was a child. Over the years my wife and I have spent a huge amount of time down there visiting her parents, sadly no longer with us, in Port Eynon. It’s a very special place to us, as it was to Dylan. My younger son, William, who did the covers for the two Dylan books, was born in Morriston Hospital, near Swansea.

My sons, James and William love being there, as do their sons Alban (3), Matthew (2) and Dylan (10 months).

AmeriCymru: In 2004 you set up an independent press. What can you tell us about this venture? What does the future hold for Verulamium Press?

Robert: I launched Verulamium Press in 2004 because local publishers were not interested in publishing poetry and national publishers were not interested in publishing local poetry (as if poetry is not rooted in an area!).

I began by publishing my translation of El río y otros poemas, The River and Other Poems, by the Patagonian poet Andrés Bohoslavsky and some my own poems of childhood - in Luton Poems. In all honesty the press has not been very active. I published with Verulamium Press this year a collection of approaching 200 short stories (many of them micro-stories) called A Night in Buganda. Tales from Post-Colonial Africa about my experiences on an aid program in Uganda in the sixties. The background is the collapse of democracy and the rise of Idi Amin. The thing is that once I had published my poetry on my own press, publishers in other countries, namely Argentina, Mexico and Spain, began to contact me. I write in Spanish and English.

Lord Byron Ediciones in Madrid is my main publisher outside the UK. (Go to the Home page on http://verpress.com for the list of my published work. Its future? Well, it’s there and it can be used again. At present my publisher is Cambria Books, in Wales.

AmeriCymru: Where can people find out more about your work online?

Robert: From my website: verpress.com .

As you know, I write a great deal in Spanish. My first Spanish teacher in the UK was Señor Enyr Jones (‘Jonah)’) from Gaiman in Patagonia. I owe him a great deal.

I was in Argentina in 1972 working with the exiled Spanish poet, Juan Larrea, at his home in Córdoba and at his Center for Research on César Vallejo (Peru).

I use quite a lot of Spanish and Latin American digital publications, such as Analía Pascaner’s Con Voz Propia –Revista Literaria (Argentina).

Analía and her husband Jorge came over to the UK last year and we met up. If you scroll down the right hand side of http://convozpropiaenlared.blogspot.co.uk to the list of poets she has published, you will see my contributions under Robert Gurney. My work featured in Ketty Lis’s poeticas.com.ar website in which I found myself next to the giant Dylan Thomas (in Spanish), in the UK section, but sadly that site, that was supported by major international institutions and Oxford University, seems to have been taken down. I publish short stories with Benma in Mexico City.

AmeriCymru: What are you working on at the moment?

Robert: At the moment I am writing a Spanish edition of my poems dedicated to Dylan. The provisional title is Para Dylan (For Dylan). I have been approached about it by more than one publisher. I also plan to publish Juan Larrea’s letters to me and a dual language book of short stories, in Spanish and English, called The Seven Deadly Sins. These have been appearing in anthologies launched by Benma.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Robert: Just that I am delighted to have found AmeriCymru. I have only just found it and am still exploring it. It looks great and I am hoping I’ll be able to make a contribution to it and I look forward to making contact with fellow poets and story writers through its pages.

My antepenultimate book this year, the one about Uganda and East Africa, reflected an American-British shared experience that I treasure a great deal . There is an openess about America that you don’t always find here, sadly. I am still in near daily contact with colleagues in America from that group, TEA, Teachers for East Africa. They helped me with A Night in Buganda. (The ‘Night’, by the way, is the encroaching night of Amin.)

Robert Edward Gurney

St Albans, UK